Manama Urban Oasis: A stepping stone towards the future green cities

Lately, the global architects are taking the eco friendly designs very seriously and it’s getting reflected in their new ideas and designs. The concept of green building is now taking real shape in the construction fields. The motto of this new dive is to make our buildings more energy efficient and environmentally friendly and ultimately move towards a more sustainable urban setup. The construction of “Bab Al Bahrain Urban Oasis” was a remarkable development in this direction. Its design work was executed by Influx Studio, and reportedly they have stuffed it with a multitude of next gen power saving and eco friendly features. It’s strategically placed in the heart of Manama, the capital city of Bahrain, which seeks to connect the historic old part of the city with the newly erected and planned modern city space. A well planned and unifying pavement area tries to join these two parts of the Manama city.

Carefully designed roofs allow the influx of maximum amount of daylight but at the same time prevents direct sunlight to keep the space inside cooler. They have installed integrated passive cooling systems, to minimize the requirement of electricity in heat controlling. It’s fantastically designed solar canopies also compliments the cooling system in a big way. Moreover they are used to generate substantial amount of solar energy, which is used to power most of the electrical devices inside the building space.

The strategically designed canopies provide cool shade and shelter and beneath them there are beautifully grown garden spaces which provide a soothing green ambiance throughout this pedestrian area. The plants grown in these garden spaces are also very carefully chosen to showcase local and global biodiversity of flora. And most importantly the water used in these gardens will be mostly recycled water using waste water.

The vehicular traffic has been shifted to the underground tunnels to make sure that at least this space remains out of carbon emission and vehicle congestion, which is integral part of our urban settings.

Maximum attention has been given in erecting this whole structure, to make it in an environmentally sustainable model, using the best and state of the art techniques available. The success of such challenging and noble ventures will surely inspire other cities to come up with similar eco friendly projects, to make the future cities more clean and green.